The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has granted several licenses to digital securities exchange and custodian Archax – making it one of the world’s first authorized trading spaces for the asset-class.

Archax said Wednesday it was now licensed as a multilateral trading facility (MTF) exchange, a broker and a cash and asset custodian.
It is also the first crypto-asset firm to be registered with the U.K.'s Financial Conduct Authority, a designation that will soon be mandatory for all companies working in the digital asset space from January next year.
The London-based exchange, which is orientated towards institutions, is now authorized to host offerings, act as a trading venue as well as custody digital securities.
Co-founder and CFO Matthew Pollard told CoinDesk Archax had become a "one-stop-shop" for the still-nascent digital securities space.
A digital security is a catch-all term for traditional assets, such as equity or debt, that has been tokenized and put on the blockchain.
The upshot from Wednesday's announcement is that institutions will be able to trade digital securities on an authorized market for the very first time in the U.K.
Archax CEO Graham Rodford said the exchange now has 35 issuances in the pipeline.
Pollard said Archax employed its own specific admissions criteria for the type of digital securities it would allow on its platform.